


Halfway Coherent

by Kitsubasa



Category: Borderlands
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mild Gore, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 17:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6866272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsubasa/pseuds/Kitsubasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mistaking a dangerous plant for harmless seasoning, Krieg gives himself food poisoning -- and gives his 'better half' the reins for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halfway Coherent

We walk across the floor and collapse into a room divider, tipping it onto the bed behind. “ATE SOMETHING.”

Zed crosses from the other corner, rubbing a scalpel clean with a napkin. A beaker of bloodied water sits on his tool stand, flanked by twisted surgical tools. “Don’t be a baby, ya’ve digested a tin can, ya can digest whatever this is. Stop breakin’ my screen.”

“FUNNY PLANT. A PURPLE FEATHER SOARING FROM THE SOIL,” we say; my intent, his words. Like a sadomasochistic couple, pain tends to bring us closer.

“Lavender?” Zed grabs our shoulders and yanks us to our feet. One hand fixed in place, keeping us standing, he reaches the other behind us and props the divider up. Furniture rearranged, he lets us go.

We keel onto the bed like a felled tree. “LAVENDER-LIKE, NOT QUITE.”

“Aw, hell. Where’d ya pick it, Krieg?” Next he takes the clips of our mask, flipping them open and shimmying the leather straps free. Tossing it past his shoulder onto his gurney, there’s a clatter-crack of hard plastic-on-harder metal.

“Visited Shiver Hill, Flower Crown gave a meat plate. Lilac flowers and steak! They put a song in my heart. I found more. They put a howl in my stomach.” Eating a garnish as a main was the least stupid part of our afternoon. “What doesn’t kill us --!”

“Makes ya sick. Dependin’ whether it’s the weed I think an’ which bit ya bit into, could be indigestion, or could be organ failure.” He leaves for his filing cabinets, flicking through in a search for oh god ow

Feels like organ failure. Put it on record: Big Guy got us here, Big Guy should be dealing with our kidneys shutting off. Speaking in terms of karma and our ‘norm’.

“Jes breathe deep an’ don’t ask what these tests’re for. We’ll get through,” Zed says, nose in a fat folder marked ‘Krieg’. “Least through four-five hours of it, which is what I need. So.”

 

XXX

 

True to his word, Zed leaves us after five hours, even with my liver dissecting itself. He’s through the partitions with another patient, a civilian who replaced his arm with a chainsaw. Stump’s infected: of course. Could be I’m the smartest visitor of the day. Brings a smile to my busted dial.

God, my face. Like every cut I’ve ever taken is splitting open again, slice by slice, trying to pour out the toxins I ate. Blood vessels aren’t part of the digestive tract and they’re rebelling anyway. I swipe my hand across and study the liquid left on my palm. Purple. Great.

Rubbing a wound’s not my finest idea, especially since it’s seeping slag. Gotta rinse it clean. No sinks behind the divider, no still water. Empty bucket to catch any scientifically-significant vomit. Not helping.

On my feet, to the main room. Scratch my chest, hook my fingertips in an indentation, another sore. Like rubbing a tree, skin segmented into panels, tough as bark. Messy, solid. Should wear a shirt. Should wear the quick-change sweater I won from Marcus last winter. Should --

Urgh, focus on holding in my blood and my guts.

There, the tap. I shove my face beneath and twist it on, spraying unfiltered water into the damage. Where does Sanctuary get its water from? Too high to gather rain, not connected to the mains… cold’s clearing my head. Focus. Say something to Zed and the patient, acknowledge they’re there:

“I feel like shit.”

Zed drops something sharp into the patient with a whoosh and a shriek. “Ya what?”

“My good arm!”

“Oh.” Zed shoves a hissing pipe against the patient’s face and holds for five. Clunk. We’re alone. “Krieg, what’d ya say?”

“I feel --” Hold on. I twist the tap again. I splash another handful of water. I shut it off. I wiggle my fingers and flex my arm. I grab my side as it sends a slash of pain through my nerves. “I feel like myself.”

“I’ll be damned. Poison’s made ya halfway coherent.” He peels off his gloves and circuits the unconscious patient. “Count to twenty?”

“I’m not five, Zed,” I say, volume moderated and tone level.

“There goes that theory.” He abandons me for the still-open file cabinet, retrieving the ‘Krieg’ folder and a black marker. He flips to the rear page and crosses off an item. “Was the yellin’ somethin’ ya did before the slag, or jes after?”

“After. This is me. Me-me. Real Krieg.”

“Actually --” the worst word in the English language “-- the yellin’ is real to the rest of us as the not-yellin’. Tryin’ ta deny it might be makin’ loud-Krieg louder.”

“Can we schedule split-personality couples therapy for when I don’t feel like a human blender? Besides, he’s gone.”

“Fer the moment,” Zed says, closing the cabinet and setting the marker on top. “This is our opportunity to chat, an’ we should take it. Might help ya goin’ forward.”

‘Our opportunity to chat’ -- good point. With anyone. Convince Lilith I’m a decent person. Join a tabletop game with Tina and Torgue. Ask Karima what the cure for Overlook Flower Poisoning is. Call Doctor Samuels.

Apologise to Maya.

“I’ve got other obligations.” Lots of little wounds. Better collect the mask, no point repulsing her while I’m gunning for the opposite. Could stop at the quick-change and slap the sweater over most of me. Switch from the orange and the straps and the bandages. Mummified convict’s a look for weirdos. Psychos. “Where’s my --?”

Zed stands with the mask in hand, eyepiece cracked from its recent fall. He frowns. “I’m not yer most excitin’ pal, an’ I’m prob’ly closer with loud-Krieg… but I could make things easier full-time. Go out, ye’ll git a few words with whoever, then either process the plant or die from a ruptured stomach.”

“Maya’s fought a god with me, Zed,” I say, holding my free hand forward and gesturing for my mask. “Never said a bad word about my behavior, convinced the team to tolerate it.”

“Yer choice.” But he retracts the mask and moves to the gurney. He picks a set of bandages from beside the unconscious patient. “Lemme patch the holes ‘fore ya go. Tryin’ ta get better at surgical hygiene.”

“Thought I’d cover them at the quick-change.”

“Anyone touches you, they’ll get sticky.”

Good point. “Fast. Pain’s getting worse. Need this errand done while I’m still walking.”

“When’m I not quick an’ dirty?” He twirls the roll around my stomach. “Ah, forget the second part.”

 

XXX

 

Visited the quick-change anyway, covered my torso bandages fine, but my face is wrapped tight and visible like a vacuum-packed space dinner. I pull my steps in line, walking upright a few paces, then lose the battle with my gastrointestinal system and curl at the middle. Rinse, repeat. Sanctuary’s square to the alley the team’s settled in.

Door open. We felt bad dropping by Lilith and co’s spot whenever we needed a microwave, so Axton and Gaige bought an apartment of our own on the fringe of town. Cheap enough for a teen and a spendthrift; maybe justified by the lack of a rear wall. Maya slapped a few boards into place following an incident with Sal, beer pong, and a thousand-foot drop, but the barrier’s still stair rail-sturdy at best.

It’s a home.

Peering from the entry, we have Sal on the couch with a Truxican soap and Zer0 ‘:I’-faced beside him. Gaige building a tiny plastic Loaderbot with Axton -- Axton spotting me, standing, and crossing the unstapled carpet toward the door.

“Got something, like, everywhere,” he says, waving his hand across his face. “Karima all right?”

“Wheff Mahyeh?” These bandages are tight and my mouth is trapped underneath. The world never wants me to talk.

“Haha, yeah, she didn’t put mayo in my salad either. Overlook for you, makes this place seem ritzy,” he laughs and slaps my shoulder.

“Auwwwph.” Slaps the worst sore. I pry the wrappings on my lower face apart.

“Nice idea dressing up for the trip, even if sweaters’re out-of-season. And even if it has Claptrap on it, which might’ve reminded her of that time her husband died. I guess it’s a nice idea with bad execution --”

“I’m not a moron, I didn’t wear this to Karima’s. Where’s Maya?”

Axton lowers his hands to his sides, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. After a moment in neutral position, he raises a finger, lips pursed. Holds this pose. Finally, he puts his hands on his hips and stares into the doorstep. “Dunno know where Maya is. What’ve you done with Krieg?”

I pull the bandages wider, eyes watering into another part of the coil as the sting of Axton’s slap reaches my tear ducts. “I ate poison, I don’t have long until I collapse, who would know?”

“Lilith, maybe? They hit Moxxi’s together at lunch.” Lilith. Hooray. “You’re giving actual replies, this is too weird. Hey Gaige --!”

“I’ll explain later, if I’m functional. See you, Axton.”

“See you, Krieg…?”

Spinning and exiting the building, my stomach does a flip and my lunch comes launching up my esophagus. I splutter blood and mince against the wall.

Axton leans around the corner to spectate.

Brushing the flecks from my chin and into my face-covering, I cough. “Don’t have long.”

“No kidding,” he says. “G’luck, war boy. Say hi again when you can.”

 

XXX

 

“May I make an observation?” Tannis perks from her desk as I stumble in. 

“No."

“Wounds generally energise advanced slag subjects. Like a mother lifting a car from her deformed baby. In this scenario, the baby is you, and the mother is also you.” She laces her fingers and leans over a handwritten letter. “Is this a fair metaphor?” 

“It’s not.”

“Ah.” She takes the letter, crumples it, and throws it into her bay of washing machines. “In addition, we’re usually poor conversationalists, and your responses have been very direct. What’ve you done, Krieg, and may I write about it?”

“Zed has the notes. I have to get upstairs and see Lilith.” Limping to the foot of the staircase, I take a deep breath. Climb. Hands on either bannister, weight distributed between four extremities. My legs are numb.

“If you solicit her help successfully, do say,” Tannis calls from behind. “My thesis on her tattoos needs finishing, and she won’t give me access to the last pieces of data!”

I wonder why.

On the upper floor, Mordecai, Brick, and Lilith sit at a computer, scrolling through a website covered in tiny, grey, CGI people.

“-- looks nothing like my character!”

“Whaddaya mean, Lil? She’s perfect. I’m orderin’ twenny.”

“She looks like Salvador wearing a robe!”

“Can I show her the character I saved?”

“Nah, Brick, godda click ‘cart’ ‘nother dozen times.”

“Enjoy playing robe-Sal for our next twenty campaigns, Mordecai. I’m not using this.”

“Eh, you said she was a dwarf, an’ with Tina runnin’ the show…”

“You’re the worst. Next time, I’m in charge of the digistruct figu --”

“I thought I was the worst.” I lean on the doorway with affected cool. My legs wobble. “Given how often you set me on fire.”

Lilith wheels her chair to face me, shaking Brick and Mordecai out of place.

My knees -- maybe out of empathy for them -- buckle, flopping me to the floor. “Evening.”

“Slab?” Brick’s reply comes faster than Axton’s did, but hits a higher note of confusion. Same as Zed, someone who likes ‘loud-me’ realising he’s not present. “Krieg?”

“Pfft. He managed two whole sentences,” Lilith says with disbelief. Her features hang open anyway.

“Whoever it is looks like hell.” Mordecai shuffles close and squats beside me.

“Here I thought, ‘mask, bandages, what’s the difference?’”

“The difference is you’re speaking.” Lilith’s expression doesn’t change. “To us. Not Tina or Moxxi or Torgue or any of the people who --”

“I heard you were the last to see Maya,” I grumble.

“There you go, Lil,” Brick says, joining Mordecai at my side. “The romantic we know and love.”

Leaning backwards on her computer chair with a plastic clatter, Lilith groans. “Why this time?”

“You’ll like this:” I smile through my bandages, bile tanging my lips. “To apologise for harassing her.”

“By harassing her more?”

“She tells me to get gone, I’m clear-headed enough to listen,” I say with a shrug.

Lilith weighs my reasoning against hers. Trickier balance than usual, given I’ve got reasoning to speak of. Scales in place and mind made, she slumps forward. Her knees splay and she rests her forearms between them. “Zaford’s distillery. Collecting an order for Moxxi.”

“Thanks.” I swing my weight, ready to climb to my feet. None of my muscles cooperate. I end spread across the ground and staring into Brick’s shoes.

“Can you walk?” he asks.

“Mind us givin’ ‘im a hand Lil?” Mordecai follows.

“Go wild. I’ll be reworking this miniature into a real dwarf.” She lays a hand on a mouse, attention refocusing.

Propped between a Brick and a hard face, we slip into the hall.

 

XXX

 

Despite the hour the distillery’s weather is bright -- gentle blue sky atop pale green hills and subtle brown rocks. The air is sweet, the breeze is soothing.

We’re a disturbance at best.

“He’s drooping your side.” Brick kicks for Mordecai’s leg and hits me instead.

“‘Cause I’mma foot lower. Deal.” Mordecai rolls his barely-visible eyes.

“I’m used to being lopsided.” Something dribbles from my nose, I sniff it in again.

“Trying to set up your fairy-tale moment!” Brick says, expression getting dreamy. “You ride in on a white horse, tell her the curse is broken and her Prince is here in a cute sweater. Ladies dig sweaters.”

“We’re no horse,” Mordecai huffs. He shuffles my arm from the edge of his shoulder closer to his neck. “Never heard ‘bout a Prince in bandages.”

“He’s got lil’ hearts on his --”

“Yeah, guess the sweater’s a point in favour.”

“This isn’t about romance,” I interject. “This is about common decency.”

“But you love her.” Brick’s emotional investment is smart as stocks in Atlas. “Hoped what you said to Lil was underselling the trip.”

I hope too, Brick.

There’s a yellow figure sticking from a stretch of grass. Crate hoisted in front of her chest. Steady hold, steady pace. Her face jerks up as she spots us.

“Maya! We can take the crate!” Brick starts the conversation two sentences ahead of the rest of us.

“What?” she replies, still a few hundred feet ahead.

“We take the crate, you take Krieg!”

“What?” Once more, with exasperation.

“Don’ haveta if you don’ wanna!” Mordecai adds.

The three of them quiet until we’re closer together.

“Is there a reason we’re trading?” She drops the crate at her feet and shakes the cramp from her wrists. A delicate series of clicks comes from the bones. Then, she lunges -- pulling her thighs and calves left and right.

“Tell her,” Brick says, tossing me alongside the crate.

I groan, pebbles bumping into wounds, organs shuffling from assigned places. Contort to a sitting position. Gaze stays low. Not eager to see her reaction. “I ate something stupid. I can’t walk at the moment, but I can talk pretty clear.”

She stops stretching.

Crouching to my level, she tilts around until she meets my eyes. Hair’s skewed across her face, eyebrows raised at the middle, lips open a fraction. Brushing it behind her ear, she puckers her mouth -- stuck before the word.

Say it. You can’t breathe with your face scrunched, and I can’t breathe until you respond. Oxygen’s the only thing my body’s processing right. I need it, you need it. Air, in our faces. Maya. Please.

“Krieg?”

“That’s what _I_ said!” Brick steals our moment.

“I insulted his bandages.” Mordecai is equally helpful.

“He wore a sweater for you.” Whoever put Brick in charge of a gang with Buzzards made a mistake -- he’s a terrible wingman.

“Nice work, boys. All three of you.” She’s lumping me with them? “Guess I’d better swap packages, if he’s wrapped specially for me.”

What?

“What I was hoping to hear!” With a single, smooth movement, Brick hoists the crate to my old spot on his shoulder. “Mordy, let’s give Slab his peace.”

“G’luck,” Mordecai affirms.

And they’re gone.

Maya takes me in both hands, leading from my seat to my feet to a fireman’s hold over her back. My arms dangle at her knees, my face at her hip. I could kick her thigh from here. A single line of explanation: “I need a break from Sanctuary anyway.”

 

XXX

 

Torn wedding decorations stick from the cliffside grass, reduced to a new kind of confetti. We sit on forgotten folding chairs. The wind’s too strong and her hair is flapping at her cheekbones. The caves have shelter, but the caves have dark. What monster would waste this sunset?

He could be hiding in plain sight.

The spot is a test -- like dragging a vampire into the sun. Am I angry enough to rush for the shade? The answer is no. Until I pass out, the answer will remain no.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“For which thing in particular?” she says, staring at the sea.

“Everything we do when he’s -- I do when I’m -- you know.”

Her chair creaks as she leans her elbows into her knees.

Orange on the waves, shades of peach. Pandoran sea creatures with names we’re better not knowing.

“The volume’s fine, we work with Sal. The weird things you say, the funny-weird’s okay, the uncomfortable-weird we forgive you for,” she inhales, “the part that gets me is the devotion. And you just travelled half Pandora to find me.”

“I --” know, because I discussed it with multiple people, “-- appreciate you not shooting me. Maybe too much.”

“Yeah,” she says with a wry laugh. “Maybe.”

A streamer, cut but intact enough to tangle, loops around itself in the breeze. Damp, not too damp to fly.

“Brick made a mistake. The sweater wasn’t for you,” my voice is low. “Under the projection I look like a Psycho. Toss in the screaming and the running at people… no reason to assume I’m more.”

The punch bowl at the altar is overflowing with condensation and rainwater, tinted pink.

“You made the assumption and convinced the others to share it.”

Our chairs whine.

Maya laces her fingers, setting her chin atop them. She breathes, as people do.

I breathe too.

“What’s the deal with the screaming, anyway?”

We exhale.

“You want to know how it started?”

“Yeah.”

“Figured the pieces were easy to puzzle. The WEP, mad science, slag. They cut me open; one side of the wound got mad, the other tried to be reasonable. Hyperion picked the scab until it scarred. Here I am.”

“Here you are.”

“I try to calm him from the inside, but ‘relaxation’ sounds like ‘recapture’ to him. Doesn’t have a great vocabulary. Meat, am I right?”

“Hah, meat. And nipples.” She laughs.

I don’t. “I’d rather not solve the nipple mystery.”

“Seriously? You aren’t curious where that preoccupation came from?”

“Couldn’t we talk about the family-friendly obsessions? Bicycles, salads?”

“Nope. When he’s next around, it’s nipple time.” She gives me a thumbs up, accompanied by a sincere smile. Might’ve been a wink there, too -- it’s hard to spot at this angle.

Soon as the good arrives, the bad shows too; couple of codependent party guests. My abdomen bubbles hot and deep. Red rising, flooding each available passage with lava. I’m bleeding on the inside. A bubble bursts, I feel a wash of pain, it subsides, a new burst follows.

Maya reads my discomfort. Her words stream out: “Any comments to pass to the team? Our friends? Miscellaneous people?”

“Tell Zer0 to acknowledge my existence. Gaige and Axton and Sal’re good,” I say, gaps between my teeth accentuated with blood. “Tell Moxxi I appreciate her, and Brick and Mordecai and Zed.”

“Will do.”

“If people can act like I’m human,” I pant, clasping my throat, “that’d be -- it’d be -- good.”

“Consider it done.”

There’s a smile.

There’s darkness.

 

XXX

 

He rolls out of bed, onto the floor. Thrashing our limbs into furniture and our head into the skirting board, he shrieks.

“Ya got eight new staples in yer chest an’ I advise ‘gainst rippin’ ‘em open,” Zed says, looming from between the dividers. “Also -- not an issue yet -- don’t go near metal detectors with yer new kidney.”

Nails under the top bar of a staple, he threatens to uproot it anyway. A shift, a quarter-inch of lift -- he gurgles as the broken skin comes tugging with it. No, pulling them will make it worse. He unhooks our finger and throws our arms into the air with a last howl.

“Y’ain’t allowed to eat strange flowers again,” Zed continues. “Got the notes I need an’ this’s been a helluva hassle.”

We look toward him.

For less than a split-second, his face is for me, not my other half. Sympathetic and scolding at the same time.

The Big Guy nods like a dog, shaking horizontally almost as often as he shakes vertically. Acceptance of the un-doctor’s orders clarified, he wavers onto the bed. Several moments to stability. Then he walks our fingers across our torso, marvelling at our train track-scars without disturbing them. Splits closed, bandages removed.

Convict pants, again.

“I’m not soft,” he says, patting our exposed muscles and ignoring the sting.

“Ya used the quick-change? Guess she deactivated it ‘fore droppin’ ya by.”

I was the part of us that put it on. He was asleep.

“I was gifts and stars. A glittering present for them to enjoy!"

Then again, pain brings us closer.


End file.
